-In Plato's (c. 427-347 BC) the dialogue "Parmenides", Parmenides is visiting Athens with his student Zeno of Elea (probably not historically accurate, but who knows).
-Zeno is reading from his book of paradoxes to an audience, which includes a young Socrates.
-Socrates is curious about Zeno's paradoxes (which are trying to prove Parmenides' thesis that "everything is one").
-Socrates doesn't agree that everything is one, instead arguing that everything is one AND many SIMULTANEOUSLY. Because of the Forms of "One" and "Many" (which exclude the inclusion of their opposites ("One" can never be "Many" and vice-versa) which allow for objects to be a part of multiple forms (man is both "one" and "many" because he is "one" person, but has "many" body parts).
-Parmenides is impressed! However, he gives Socrates a taste of his own medicine by refuting him through a series of questions:
-Forms of "Similarity", "Justice", etc. are all great, but what about "man" or "fire" or "hair"? Do these have Forms?
-Socrates is unsure.
-How do we know what has a Form and what doesn't? Do man-made objects have Forms?
-Socrates is doubtful.
-Is each "large" thing made up of "large" things, so that each piece that makes it up is "large", but if this is so then each piece then is "small" compared to the "large" whole. Or is the entire "large" thing in each "large" piece, and thus separate from itself, because obviously there are different versions of "large" (like an elephant vs. a mountain).
-Socrates says that perhaps Forms are present in their participants just like how a day is present for many people simultaneously.
-Parmenides then asks if it could be compared to a sail spread out over many people. However, if the sail is like this, only one part of it is over each person.
-Socrates is unsure about how to refute this.
-What happens next in the dialogue is what Aristotle refers to as the "Third Man Argument".
-Socrates says that a Form is something that we can see that is similar in multiple things- "Large" for all things large.
-However, what about the Form "Large" itself? It must be large, too. So is there a form for the largeness of "Large"? That also includes all the things that are large?
-We will need an infinite number of Forms for "Large" in order for Forms to exist.
-Socrates is stumped. He was really into the idea that Forms were just one thing, not an infinite number of them! Another problem is that he could have denied that the form "Large" is large, but he doesn't for some reason (probably because he talked about how the Forms can't be opposites).
-Socrates decides to change tactics. What if the Forms are just thoughts?
-Parmenides counters by saying that a thought has to be ABOUT something, we can't just think of "Large" without thinking of something large.
-Socrates agrees, and switches back to his concept of Forms being "paradigms that exist in nature".
-The "Third Man Argument": Forms are independent of our minds, separate from the things that partake of them, but also similar to them too.
-Parmenides counters by focusing on Socrates' claim that the form will be similar to the things that partake in it. Doesn't that mean that we need the Form "Similarity" for this to be true? That means that all of these things share a similarity, which will require a second Form to explain the similarity between everything, and so on, forever.
-Parmenides then says that for Forms to be separate, they might relate to one another, but they can't relate to us or the things around us.
-A human master is the master of a human slave, not a master of the form "Slavery". Also, the Form "Mastery" does not have mastery over the human slave, it can only be master of the Form "Slavery". Therefore, Forms are disconnected from humans.
-This destroys Socrates argument because he wanted the Forms to be a part of our knowledge, but they can't be if they are disconnected because we have to have knowledge ABOUT something.
-Does this dialogue suggest that Parmenides/Plato/Socrates rejects the Theory of the Forms?
-No. It's just suggestions for how to refine the argument.
-Parmenides says that there ARE answers to these questions that prove that the theory is true because things DO share similarities.
-He also says that with more experience, one could defend the Theory of the Forms more strongly.
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